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Technology Stocks : Compaq -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MeDroogies who wrote (86731)	11/13/2000 9:49:34 AM
From: John Koligman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 97611

MeD - Amazing to note the disparity in voting systems across the country - from touch screen to punch card. If nothing else, perhaps this election will help educate many Americans as to the mechanics of the electoral process, and result in some long overdue changes in it. As for the market, Compaq is rapidly heading back to MC's option grant levels, it just crashed through 25 and is bid at 24 1/2. John

To: MeDroogies who wrote (86731)	11/13/2000 10:37:13 AM
From: Richard Habib	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 97611

Re the election. As usual there is a lot of misinformation being distributed. It's not helped by the fact that the PB spokesman in two separate press conferences botched the explanation of what constituted a vote. The only types of cards that will result in a significant change from a machine count is those overvotes where a choice is punched through, no matter how many corners are hanging and a choice is also dented - either a dimple or pregnant (the distinguishing characteristic of both pregnant & dimple is that the stylus didn't go through the card). Those cards will be added to the tally of the choice that is punched through. The machine has a difficult time distinguishing these based on how deep the dimple is. I would defy anyone to offer a reasonable explanation of why a voter would put his stylus through one choice, not put his stylus through another and mean to vote for the latter or not vote at all. Several have confused undervotes with the above. An undervote is where a choice is not indicated. There may be a dimple in one choice but no choice has been punched through. These are not counted although it should be noted that the machine may or may not count them depending on the depth of the dimple but in this case you can't distinguish whether the voter decided not to vote or voted but didn't apply enough pressure. There were 19K+ overvotes in PB and about 7K undervotes. Incidently they will also count ballots where the voter punched two choices all the way through but then indicated by pen or pencil which vote he really intended - which I understand happens not infrequently. For Night Writer - they should hand count all counties since hand counts are more inclusive but I would point out again that the tally will usually over vary significantly when punch ballots are used and there is a significant overvote. This is a limitation of that type of machine. Optical ballots are usually immediately spit out if the ballot is ambiguous. Obviously, electronic and mechanical voting machines provide no paper ballot to recount. Rich